


how traveling feels like

by sirnando



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 20:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11215383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirnando/pseuds/sirnando
Summary: Sergio finds Fernando in the middle of the Spain squad's alcoholic adventures.





	how traveling feels like

**Author's Note:**

> the summary is probably horrible in description, but! you could say this is a very small part au since Fernando comes in after Sergio and the dates are out of whack and honestly? they would never be legally allowed to party this much but it just makes it more fun. sorry if this is choppy or too quickly paced. as always feedback is loved xx

It had been Italy or Sicily or some other foreign country that was not Spain. Where the sun shone just as bright but the alcohol tasted sweeter. More touristy. Sergio had never been a geographer.

Fernando had been in the group of fairly newer members. Beach blonde boy who sat in the corner with tufts of hair stuck behind his ears. The type who had skin peeling off his nose after 15 minutes of sun exposure. Sergio had noticed him, but was never presented with an opportunity to personally introduce himself. Of course the official “Wave your hand hello” ceremony had been lead by Del Bosque on the first day, but Sergio had always strived to hold his own introductions ceremony privately.

His chance came three days into their training sessions when Pepe and Alonso had recommended an outing to the bar. Why? They never needed a reason to celebrate alongside bottles of foreign alcohol. Sergio never needed to question them because he was always third in command at the bar, ordering, pouring, being told by the employees to stop pouring. Whisky ran down his fingers from spilling and naively trying to clean it up using palms. Fuzz stuck to them scraped from the napkin that Iker had tried to clean Sergio with. The music was not nearly loud enough to drown their voices out and Silva screamed into everyone’s ears, asking why the “Fuck Italians only drank this sugary wimp shit” while sucking on the end of the only Svedka bottle he could find. Iniesta pried it from his fingers, looked apologetically at the barman who took it back.

Fernando did not seem as invested as the rest of them. He sat in the darkest part with Juan who kept his small head turning wildly, observing, relaying his new discoveries to Fernando’s ear. All he ever got was a small smile, Sergio noticed. He was holding his own investigation, not sharing it though.

At one point, when Pique was drinking out of Cesc’s belly button and Juan decided this was worth getting an up close experience, Sergio took his opportunity to scoot a barstool next to Fernando. He was stirring his coke with a maraschino cherry when Sergio asked “So what type of pale Spanish species are you?”

Fernando looked to him for the first time, eyes focused on the chip crumbs in the corner of Sergio’s mouth. "I play in England."

Sergio rose his eyebrows in exaggerated approval. “So you’re evidently not used to this type of weather?” He slurred his words slightly, but was still relatively coherent. He had limited himself so he could remember most of this interaction. If anything, he cared deeply about first impressions. 

And Fernando was evidently amused at this point, smiled smirkingly into Sergio’s hazy eyes. “I left Spain a year ago, hardly enough time to forget its heat.”

“Yet here your are,” Sergio huffed and tried crossing his legs. Fernando steadied his back when he started leaning too far, “in a bar in the middle of Italy with a sunburn and coke.” He made no sense, but Fernando laughed and agreed with an “I guess you’re right” anyway.

“Why would anyone leave our wonderful country?”

“I was tired of the same scenery. Needed something new.” he watched Sergio watching the rest of the crowd. Noisy, sloppy, taking up more space than was necessary.

They stayed silent. And then, "So how does England taste?" Fernando had looked at him questioningly, beads of sweat pooling on his forehead.

"What?" Sergio didn't repeat the question or wait for a response. He tasted it for himself.

And for the record England tasted like cherry flavored corn syrup, Spanish salt and flakes of chapped lips. Simple yet a flavor he kept refreshing his memory of the whole night. 

~

Iker was standing over Sergio, clipping his watch around his wrist when he opened his eyes slowly, shook his head sluggishly. “Um,” Sergio turned to the other side of the bed, noticed Fernando was gone.

“He left like an hour ago. Tripped over your shoes and then apologized to them.” Iker started to button his collar, Sergio sat up.

“Don’t tell anyone?”

“When have I ever told anyone?” and he left shaking his head in disappointment. 

Sergio found Fernando in his own room, Juan was gone.

“Oh God Iker was there this morning, you told me he wouldn’t be? I can’t have anyone kno-” Sergio pressed his index finger into Fernando’s lips. They bunched up around it. “Iker never tells. No one else will know.” He replaced his finger with his lips and Fernando moaned, wrapped his arms around Sergio’s neck. Told him that, more of this? Might just convince him to move back to Spain.

~

That night it had been Xavi’s idea to celebrate another round of nothing on a beach. More room, less items to break, a longer walk to the bar. Except Pepe and Xabi were always a step ahead in evolution than everyone else, brought backpacks of liquor in plastic water bottles. One for everyone. Xabi had band aids plastered all over his hand from the places broken glass had sliced through. Cue one step back in evolution, since they decided it best to pour the alcohol last night before they had a chance to return home from the clouds.

Sergio decided to respect Fernando’s preference of staying on the sidelines, but also to satisfy his own desire for privacy. No one cared to notice, regardless, not even Juan who had found a friend in Cesc and followed him around, started drinking from miscellaneous body parts too.

Sand had found itself in Sergio’s ass, sand that he refused to admit to. He wriggled on the towel while Fernando babbled on about genetically modified grapes in Italian wine. It had been interesting during the first three minutes, but now Sergio’s eyes were bulging a little. The bump in his throat kept moving with his gulping. He paused Fernando in the middle of his sentence, limped his way over to the crowd and came back with two water bottles full of a liquid that smelled like wine. Maybe wine mixed with beer. Maybe neither. But Sergio chugged it down, looked at Fernando quizzically who was studying the bottle.

“We just talked about how relatively unhealth-” but Sergio took it from his hands and tipped it back into Fernando’s throat.

~

Sergio collected seashells for Fernando. Half out of buzzed nonsensicality and half out of admiration. His childish demonstration of adoration. The shells didn’t have holes in them and Sergio frustratedly poked at them with the strings of his bathing shorts, bearing no results. Fernando pried them from his clenched fingers, put them in his pocket. Promised he’d have them professionally drilled into back home. A few fell out through holes Fernando did not know he had. But Sergio was too focused on the sunset in Fernando’s eyes to notice.

The rest of the team had either fallen asleep in the sand, noses buried in grains that were sucked up into their nostrils, or drunkenly lying near the waves. No one bothered pulling out the sleeping ones except the Last Sober Iker. Fernando had been too busy drawing stories into Sergio’s chest while he hummed along.

Fernando slept in Sergio’s bed again that night. Iker had politely moved onto the balcony after Sergio had slurred at him to ‘Fuck off’. Fernando smiled apologetically. And he had talked about knights in pantyhose and wedgies, fish getting lost in sea anemones and kelp, chickens allergic to eggs, Spaniards with alcohol problems, had exhausted every type of fairytale he could think of on the beach. But Sergio nuzzled into him in bed, took his hand lazily and placed it on his abs. Shook his head in a cue for Fernando to start. So now it was rabbits with an unhealthy obsession with thorned rose bushes and an Iker who stuffed toilet paper into his ears.

~

It had been grapes and baths in olive oil. Illegal pasta, baguettes stuffed up assholes, wine that made you gag and a Pepe who sang into the canals of Venice. One time the training, ten times the entertainment of everyone throwing pieces of paper with suggestions of what to do tonight written on them into Pepe’s newly bought fedora. It had been a fist fight between Busquets and Villa in front of a badly lit cathedral over the last pizza pin they both wanted to buy for their girlfriends. Puyol was recording, Sergio threw dollars in their direction that Fernando frantically ran after and gathered. It was Sergio swearing to Fernando that he was getting high off of the smell of lasagna oozing out of the windows of private homes. Stumbling together into the hotel after Fernando finally gave in two nights before they had to leave and downed four of Pepe’s magic genie bottles, a name Albiol coined. It was Fernando drawing stars on the ceiling of the hotel room with a pen running out of ink, while Sergio made his own red ones on Fernando’s pelvis.

And now, on the day they had to leave, while everyone took shots of a wine they would miss just purely out of nostalgic symbolism, their own metaphoric grapevines, similar to those they had climbed up to windows on, snaked themselves around Fernando and Sergio’s necks. It had been bearable when the vine connected the two together, but life’s realities had stormed in and snipped the green strand in two. Sergio’s eyes bulged out, gasping for air. Fernando pretended to not hear Sergio’s comments about England.

Their flight was delayed due to lightning and thunder.

~

They had promised one another to interact every day even though Sergio was horrendous at responding, a trait everyone knew. But for Fernando? He’d have his phone’s vibration surgically implanted into his wrist. Fernando assured him it was not going to be necessary.

The plane took them to Spain, connecting flights waited for those who played internationally. Sergio gripped Fernando’s hand to his chest, mouth on his neck on a stall wall. The smell of chlorine and dirty plunger setting was much less romantic.

“You don’t actually have to go,” Sergio had mumbled, working at Fernando’s jaw. He did not get a response, so optimistically received it as a possibility.

Fernando had looked out his seat window, picking at the peeling skin under his eyes, into the relative direction of where he did not see, but knew Sergio stood with his ponytail pulled back too tightly.

~

He was timely with answering the video calls where Fernando would press his fingers to the screen, against the shape of Sergio’s temple. Would direct Sergio exactly where to place his own. It always took a little longer than satisfactory, but Fernando had been raised with golden studded patience and had grown a tendency for forgiving Sergio. The image was usually grainy. Sometimes Sergio’s lips were transported lower onto his chin or all the way to the right side. And Fernando would carve the concept into his head, while telling Sergio about how his tan was fading away. About how the rain attacked him. How he couldn’t draw stars into his ceiling because he was renting the house. That he had bought frozen lasagna, but it was watery, stale, nothing worth getting high over. That the only beach he had was the margin of dust along a river whose fish washed up dead. Now it was less of a margin, more of the width of a thread.

Once when he was sipping on a glass of carbonated water and feeling waves of naive philosophical musings pop themselves into him from the bubbles, he had told Sergio through the screen why he chose Liverpool. That it had to be a red kit, it had to, to remind him of Spain at least to some degree. The connection was failing, Sergio caught one third of the heart that Fernando poured out to him. He had never been a literary enthusiast either.

~

It took Fernando four months to finally catch onto the idea of inviting Sergio to England. Sergio had occasionally tried to send him hints, if only due to the fact that he did not ever really wonder about the weather conditions Liverpool was prone to having. But Fernando only babbled on about seasonal cloud patterns without recommending that Sergio come experience them first hand.

Fernando relayed that he had a few free days, that Sergio should strive to make them available as well. And even though there was a two percent probability that he would be able to, Sergio was experienced in working out situations that were not in his favor.

He arrived two days later with shorts and a t-shirt on. Underestimated the chill Fernando warned him about, but Fernando had a blanket waiting in his car. He never overestimated Sergio’s underestimations. Neither of them wanted to stay indoors even though it was pitch black, Sergio stumbling over his feet behind Fernando while they walked. Grabbing onto his shoulders for balance.

They had sat under a park bridge, Fernando dipping his toes into the creek. Sergio was beside him, coughing on a cigarette. He denied when Sergio offered.

"Asthma."

Sergio sucked awkwardly, balancing it between his ring and middle finger. It fell onto the ground when he coughed roughly. "Aesthetic."

Fernando rolled his eyes but picked up the burning stick and placed it between his lips, sucked in, gripped it with his teeth as he gagged on the smoke. The burning butt illuminated Sergio's smirk as he leaned in and plucked it out with his lips. He threw it into the water, kissed Fernando with an open mouth. Let him puff the smoke into his throat.

~

They had hid in the back of the metro one night. Sat on the floor cuddled up next to one another, next to a dude who was selling handmade pins made out of bottle caps. Sergio had insisted they buy ones. He got the penis. Fernando got the ass. And they pinned them to each other's shirts in a fit of hushed giggles, had to lift up the blanket they were wrapped in and the jackets, and Sergio pricked himself with the ass. But Fernando had held a dirty napkin to the tiny droplet of blood. Kissed the pain away.

Sergio had been watching Fernando fuss over him intently. The purse in his lips, the crease between his eyebrows, the flittering fingers that frantically searched for the napkin. Fernando had made eye contact with him after the fatal injury was attended to, was startled by his dilated pupils and he shrugged away blushing after Sergio persisted his staring. "What Sese?" He mumbled with a half smirk because Sergio was smiling.

"God I love you."

The words nested themselves in Fernando's bangs. Tickled his lips into a smile that Sergio traced with his thumb. They had missed their stop sixteen blocks ago, had to rent a mothball hotel room for the night because Fernando had not the slightest idea where they were.

~

Sergio had left, telling Fernando he was unsure of whether he would return because he felt his skin paling after only two days. He would consider meeting in Austria, however, a choice they both knew they did not have.

But he kept his promise. Reunited with Fernando and the rest of squad among the Austrian sausage and the beer kegs that they held competitions with. Sergio always won, always greeted it all in the sewer outside of the pubs for a second time, while Fernando massaged the small of his back. Among the cobblestone cockache that exhausted their thighs. Among the palaces and castles, brick and mortar, that Sergio promised Fernando he would build for him someday. And he did. To an extent. With the sheets and pillows and the one chair they were provided. And Fernando was convinced that no royalty had ever been worshipped quite as historically as Sergio did him, in the claustrophobic space upon a badly carpeted floor.

~

They bought matching shell necklaces in a dark side street shop that looked like it sold more than your general PG memorabilia. It was beached theme with plastered parrots hanging from the ceiling, sand blanketing the counters and the towels scattered randomly across the tile? Covering holes in the ground so no one would step in them and twist an ankle. Liability protection. Sergio had checked while Fernando was paying.

It was amusing to Fernando when Sergio asked why it had to be shells. That something which had been so vital to him on the beaches of Italy was now pointless on Austria’s artificial ones. He did not recall anything when Fernando relived it for him, but wore the necklace out of metaphorical necessity.

They had taken baths together in Italy. Bubble soap, leftover champagne Sergio poured in and some ripped up colorful business cards as confetti. Sergio had a collection from whenever they went out in his drawer. A DIY bath bomb that didn't give Fernando's skin a rash but left it feeling a little stiff from the crystallized champagne sugar on it. Sergio had sat between Fernando's legs, slumped so his head rested on Fernando's chest. His toes wiggling against the other's. And even when he was drunk, sloppy, exhausted and barely coherent, he remembered to remind Fernando to turn the bath water on. Shakily ripped the cards and always crashed into the water instead of slowly lowering himself. Twice his aim had been terrible and he slammed into Fernando's crotch instead.

But Austria did not offer them with a bathtub. Only a high tech shower that had buttons instead of a lever and doors that Sergio swore were see through, they had to be, but he only saw a blurry silhouette if Fernando when he walked in.

It didn't stop them though. Didn't stop Sergio's collecting or Fernando from taking all the towels besides one, and stuffing them into the cracks against the shower door. Sergio created a makeshift plug with a sock that he stuffed into the drain. It was not the same, but they sat splashing in the little puddle that they were able to make until the towels were oversaturated with water. Sergio watched his confetti flow down the drain while Fernando cleaned up their mess.

~

Iker claimed no one suspected anything, when Sergio asked about the gossip he now only periodically tuned into. But regardless, they preferred sitting in front of one another at the table instead of next to. For one, Sergio liked watching Fernando play with his peas. Smirked when Fernando blushed because he had noticed the staring. Second, in the midst of needing to touch each other in some manner at all times, it was extremely difficult to make thighs pressed together unsuspicious. Someone was bound to notice either an abnormally outstretched leg or two chairs scraping closer together than your average foot distance. Fernando was nonetheless astonished that nobody had thought to question why both of them had to re-put their shoes on every time either got up from the table.

Since they had no beaches to get wasted on, Pepe and Xabi found a semi abandoned alley for all of them to crowd into. Iker had forbidden them from entering bars altogether. It was cramped but it only took 20 minutes for majority of them to be floating too high on cotton candy clouds to pay any attention to someone sweating down their neck.

Navas discovered that if you scraped white rocks onto the brick walls, you left behind a mark. A hoard, including Sergio, started drawing, mumbling incoherently about each individual's artwork mirroring Gaudi, Picasso, the street artist that was selling caricatures who they passed earlier that day. But Sergio strayed from drawing to his own interpretation and turned to redrawing the stories Fernando had told him close to a year before. Fernando stood next to him sideways, head leaned into the brick and watched Sergio's tongue stick out his mouth in concentration, ask from time to time for Fernando's approval. He was impressed by the detail Sergio remembered considering he hadn't known what his name was a large portion of the time.

~

Whenever Fernando grew drowsy, he would straddle Sergio and force him to carry him around. His lips pressed into Sergio’s neck, one of Sergio’s hand around Fernando’s thigh, the other gripping onto his ass. Fernando was heavy, Sergio strained to reach for things because drowsy Fernando meant limp rag doll Fernando. He did not think to provide at least some form of relief for Sergio by holding on tighter. Only until Sergio groaned Baby please, I need to put you down, into Fernando’s ear. Only then did Fernando pretend to not hear and strengthened his grip. Sergio only laughed quietly, restlessly.

 

It was a concept he thought up later on in Italy and repeated it from the very beginning in Austria. They had barely set their stuff down when Fernando was already pawing at Sergio’s arms, getting ready to jump. And Sergio, no matter if he was absolutely wasted, carried Fernando until all he could feel was a tingling in his arm and Fernando started squirming because his nails were digging into skin. That was when he squatted in front of the bed and collapsed onto it with Fernando still holding on koala-style. It had happened ten times now, Sergio had been keeping a mental tally chart.

~

A day before their departure, Sergio told him he wanted a haircut. Fernando had looked to him, horror in his eyes. A haircut? Sergio deciding to finally chop off the oily strands that always attacked Fernando’s eyes and dripped who knew what on to Fernando’s cheeks when Sergio leaned over him? Impossible.

But it was true. He wanted something new, fresh. And Fernando cupped his cheeks, pulled him in until their noses were almost touching and nodded yes, please cut it, but not until he was around to do it.

When? Sweden. He’d cut it for him in Sweden.


End file.
